There is a new heartland, representing a new American dream, and it
can be found in the new residential and commercial landscapes of Ohio
and the rest of America, if we choose to open our eyes and take a
look.
During the past thirty years, there has emerged throughout America a new
kind of urban vision that blends residential/suburban development with
large-scale commercial centers. Rolling farmland and country estates
that used to surround towns and cities have given way to vast housing
developments that feature nearly identical, hastily built mini-mansions
with enormous garages and fancy yards. These are the new bedroom
communities for middle-class Americans who commute to urban America
where the jobs are.
For the first time, these residential enclaves are linked to big-box
shopping complexes where traditional Main Streets of yore have been
eclipsed by malls known as "lifestyle centers" filled with national
chains whose commercial architecture is a blend of multiple historic
periods and styles that create a fanciful display but have no relation
to regional traditions. Behind this imagined past era of luxurious
consumerism is a ubiquitous culture based on global marketing in which
homogenization and conformity have won over the American dream and
created a new kind of American heartland.
Andrew Borowiec is the first photographer to provide a comprehensive
vision of this new American landscape. He directs our attention toward
how such development has evolved in his home state of Ohio, a
longstanding bellwether for American tastes and values whose citizens
have voted for every winning candidate in a presidential election but
one since 1944. It's also the place where fast-food companies
test-market new products and the place where chewing gum, Teflon, and
the first airplane, cash register, gas-powered automobile, traffic
signal, and vacuum cleaner were invented. Even the state's Division of
Travel and Tourism has long relied on "Ohio, the Heart of It All" as its
popular motto to attract visitors to the state.
Andrew Borowiec's work follows in the tradition of other legendary
photographers who so keenly interpreted land and life in America--among
them Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Robert Adams, Frank Gohlke, and other
New Topographics photographers. He has used his keen eye and extensive
fieldwork to give us a fresh, humorous, and razor-sharp view of what is
happening in America today. There is a new heartland, representing a new
American dream, and it can be found in the new residential and
commercial landscapes of Ohio and the rest of America, if we choose to
open our eyes and take a look.
